The Chelsea stadium, Stamford Bridge, is a 15 minute walk from our flat so that automatically makes them our home team and us big fans (right?). Last season I tried to get tickets but the matches were always sold out. It appears since it's the start of the season it's a bit easier and I was able to get two lower level tickets to see a Chelsea vs. Fulham match. We got seats 12 rows off the field and it was awesome!
These are actually the Fulham fans. In order to keep the violence down they make the visiting team's fans enter through a separate entrance and sit in their own section. Security guards sit up the sides of their section so that they can't walk along the row to the home team fans. Some local pubs also make you show your ticket stub to enter before and after the match as they will only allow home team fans in.
It's all pretty funny when you consider the two teams playing; the Chelsea team is from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Fulham team is from the Royal Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The two suburbs are both in London and side by side! Not to mention that technically the Chelsea stadium is in Fulham, on a road called Fulham Road! But they still have to keep everyone straight as they are fanatical about their football.
Given the above relationship, one of the chants we had to listen to the entire match was the Fulham fans chanting, "theres only one team fulham, the real fulham". Many of the other chants are not appropriate for all audiences. Although the chanting may sound musical on tv, but in real life you can make out the words and most of the chants are full of swearing and blatant insults to teams and players.
Full time ended with a nil-nil tie. That sounds boring, but it was actually exciting and we saw lots of goal chance, including one goal scored by Chelsea but called back on a bad call, and a penalty kick by Fulham where the guy hit the crossbar!! It was fun laughing at the Fulham fans after that one!
The match was between two Premiership teams, but it was also a Carling Cup game which means that when it ends 0-0 they do 30 minutes of overtime and when that doesn't solve anything they go to penalty kicks (so we definitely got our money's worth after an extra 45 mins of game time!). In the penalties the Chelsea keeper saved the last Fulham penalty kick and Chelsea won the game!
Mike
